Mormonism

Mormonism. A worldwide faith by the late twentieth century, Mormonism arose in western New York in the 1820s as seekers gathered around Joseph Smith (1805–1844), a young farmer reputed to be translating a text engraved in hieroglyphics on golden plates. This translation, which Smith said he managed with spiritual help, was published in 1830 as the Book of Mormon. A scripturelike history of ancient Hebrew peoples who settled in North America, it included an account of Jesus bringing the Christian message to the New World.

Assuming prophetic powers, Smith warned of the world's end and told his followers that neither the authentic priesthood nor the true Christian church was presently on the earth. In 1829, Smith claimed that the priesthood had been restored to him, and a year later he presided over the organization of an ecclesiastical institution that Smith, claiming divine revelation, identified as the restored New Testament church. Although its members are generally called Mormons, the church's official name is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐Day Saints (LDS).

Initially the Book of Mormon and the doctrine of continuing revelation principally distinguished the LDS church from other forms of American Christianity. But further revelations promulgated by Smith quickly established the church's theological distinctiveness by adding the claim that the movement was also engaged in a literal re‐gathering of Israel in the New World. Some practical consequences of this were that Mormonism had patriarchs as well as pastors, temples in addition to meeting houses, and an ideological basis for Mormon ethnicity. Revelation also declared that with the formation of Mormonism, ancient temple rituals had been restored that conferred spiritual power on worthy Saints and created eternal families through celestial marriage and sealing ordinances. Down to 1890, Mormon men could contract celestial marriages with multiple wives.

During a tempestuous first decade, the initial LDS converts, both prosperous and clannish, were driven from their enclave in Kirtland, Ohio, and from several Missouri settlements. In 1839 they fled back to Illinois, settling in a hamlet they named Nauvoo. What they wrought there—at one time Nauvoo was Illinois's largest city—seemed miraculous to the Saints, but so dangerous to their neighbors that Joseph Smith and his brother were murdered in 1844. The Saints were forced to evacuate Nauvoo in 1847.

The murder of the prophet (as Smith was called among Mormons) disclosed a rift within the LDS community. The majority, desiring to preserve the entire theology of restoration and the enclave settlement pattern with its ecclesiastical oversight of all dimensions of existence, followed Brigham Young (1801–1877) to Utah. But a substantial minority remained behind. Committed to Mormonism in its original form, many of these Saints in 1860 “reorganized” the church under Joseph Smith III's leadership. Headquartered in Independence, Missouri, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐Day Saints (RLDS) had 250,000 members in 1996.

Meanwhile, the main body of Mormons in Utah, centered in Salt Lake City and other settlements, grew to forty thousand by 1860. The church's involvement in politics and business, as well as its acceptance of plural marriage, brought it into conflict with the federal government, and in 1857 President James Buchanan sent an army occupation force that remained until 1861. In 1896, with LDS leaders having agreed to modify the church's political and economic activities and to give up plural marriage, Utah entered the Union.

The LDS church grew steadily in the twentieth century, sustained by the missionary efforts of young volunteers. Governed by a prophet–president and a Council of Twelve Apostles, the church stressed strong family ties, a work ethic, and education, sponsoring Brigham Young University. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir became widely known. By 1996 worldwide LDS membership approached ten million. Important because it tested the nation's tolerance for religious freedom, this indigenous American religion obliged the United States to clarify the implications of the First Amendment's guarantee of the free exercise of religion.
See also Antebellum Era; Church and State, Separation of; Missionary Movement; Protestantism; Race and Ethnicity; Religion; West, The.

Bibliography

Leonard J. Arrington and and Davis Bitton , The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter‐day Saints, 1979, reprint 1992.
Jan Shipps , Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, 1985.
Grant Underwood , The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism, 1993.
John L. Brooke , The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844, 1994.

Jan Shipps